News

Bacc for the Future: Updates

Sound Connections is delighted to be a part of the Bacc for the Future campaign, supporting creativity in schools in light of announcements from the Department for Education of their plans to make the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) compulsory.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced back in June their intentions to make the EBacc compulsory, meaning that all secondary school pupils would have to study subjects listed in five ‘pillars’ of learning: Maths, English, languages (ancient or modern), sciences and humanities (defined as history or geography), leaving little room for arts subjects. The House of Lords debate, held on Wednesday 22 July, challenged the exclusion of creative subjects from the EBacc, with the EBacc being blamed for ‘already causing some schools to reduce their provision of creative and cultural subjects.’

Former Conservative education secretary, Ken Baker (Baron Baker of Dorking) expressed his concern, saying: ‘Schools up and down the country are reducing their curriculum very significantly in order to concentrate on the academic subjects included in the EBacc.’ Labour spokesperson, Lord Touhig said: ‘Given this enthusiasm for culture, why are the Government deliberately excluding study of the arts from the English baccalaureate?’ In an apparent willingness to listen, Lord Nash, minister of state for education, said that he would ‘go away and look at this further.’

Sound Connections Director, Philip Flood, said: ‘Sound Connections believes that music, alongside the other creative subjects, is central to the overall development of young people and should be at the heart of the curriculum.’